Grizzly settlement talks break down

The delisting of the Grizzly Bear is being challenged in two district courts.  Bear advocates point to the tenuous food supply given global warming and the high mortality rate of bears shot by hunters.  Settlement talks were pursued to see if the all the parties could work out the differences.  That didn’t happen so it’s likely that a race between the two judges in court will decide.

Courts to decide grizzly’s status after talks flop – AP

Range War in the West

Patrick Dorinson has taken aim at one group of rabble-rousers you may be familiar with :

Range War In the West – FOXNews.com

But some environmentalist outlaws like the Western Watersheds Project had no interest in compromise and since have used and abused the legal system of this country to deny the ranchers their rights and seeks to have the U.S. Government abrogate the legal contracts that allows them to use public lands for grazing.

It’s a funny diatribe, Patrick goes to great lengths to fit in every last possible piece of mud drawing upon over a decade of uninformed cliché, contrived stereotype and baseless accusation.

Every once in awhile these guys need a really good rage in print – good on ’em.  At first I wasn’t going to post it, but it spread to NewWest so I figured we should share it as well.

Room to roam: House votes to rescue wild horses

Wild Horses in Nevada © Ken Cole

Rep. Nick Rahall, Chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources, has a soft spot for wild horses.  That’s good, it’s a national disgrace the way these animals are treated.  His bill just passed the house:

Room to roam: House votes to rescue wild horses – AP

WASHINGTON — Galloping to the aid of the nation’s wild horses and burros, the House voted Friday to rescue them from the possibility of a government-sponsored slaughter and give them millions more acres to roam.

A great point by Rep. Rahall:

“How in the world can a federal agency be considering the massive slaughter of animals the law says they are supposed to be protecting?”

Welcome to the West Rep. Rahall, our good ol’ boys back here got a whole portfolio of lots of different animals that fit that description.

Obama Admin Scraps Logging Plan in Ore. Carbon Sinks

Salazar cites failure to provide adequate Endangered Species Act consultations as on the forefront of his decision to scrap attempts to log BLM land in Oregon.

Obama Admin Scraps Logging Plan in Ore. Carbon Sinks – New York Times

The move scraps a Bush-era decision to rezone 2.6 million acres of Bureau of Land Management forests, which would have tripled current logging production and opened old-growth forests to clear-cutting.